MDL 2873 is the federal multidistrict litigation In re: Aqueous Film-Forming Foams Products Liability Litigation, centralized in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina before Judge Richard Gergel since December 2018. Federal AFFF and PFAS cases from across the country are consolidated there for pretrial proceedings. It is one of the largest MDLs in the federal system.

Is MDL 2873 a class action?

No. An MDL consolidates individual lawsuits for pretrial handling only; each case keeps its own facts and its own value. That is different from a class action, where one judgment binds every member. Cases that do not resolve can be remanded to their home districts for trial.

Who can bring an AFFF claim?

The two broad groups are personal-injury claimants — military and civilian firefighters, base personnel, airport workers, and residents who drank water contaminated by AFFF runoff — and public entities such as water authorities seeking treatment and remediation costs. Personal-injury claims generally require a diagnosed condition linked to PFAS exposure.

What settlements have already happened?

The large announced settlements to date have been with public water systems, not individual injury claimants: 3M's multibillion-dollar water-utility settlement and separate agreements involving DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva, plus state-level attorney general settlements such as New Jersey's. Those figures are industry-wide resolutions reported in the litigation. They are not results obtained by this firm and they do not predict any individual outcome.

Has the personal-injury side gone to trial?

The MDL worked through water-provider bellwethers first, and the personal-injury track — the cases involving kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, and related diagnoses — has been moving through its own bellwether selection and discovery process. Because the docket changes, treat any date you read online as needing confirmation before you rely on it.

Is it too late to file an AFFF claim?

Statutes of limitation vary by state and by claim type, and can start running from diagnosis or from when the exposure link reasonably should have been known. Waiting is the main way people lose the right to file. If you are unsure, submit the intake and let the review team check the timing rather than assuming.

AFFF MDL 2873 Status — PFAS Litigation Update

How the litigation got here

December 2018

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation centralizes federal AFFF cases as MDL 2873 in the District of South Carolina before Judge Richard Gergel.

2019 – 2022

The docket grows into the thousands as water authorities, states, firefighters, service members, and residents file. Discovery focuses first on what manufacturers knew about PFOA and PFOS toxicity and when.

2023

3M announces a multibillion-dollar settlement framework with public water systems, and DuPont, Chemours, and Corteva announce a separate water-utility settlement. Both cover drinking-water treatment costs, not individual injuries.

2024 – 2025

The MDL turns toward the personal-injury track: bellwether pools centered on kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, and ulcerative colitis, with expert discovery and general-causation briefing.

State-level actions

Attorneys general pursue separate natural-resource-damage cases. New Jersey's roughly $3 billion set of agreements with 3M and DuPont-related entities is the largest state resolution reported to date.

The settlement figures above are industry-wide resolutions reported in the AFFF litigation and in public court filings. They are not results obtained by Quinlan Law Group, and no case outcome is guaranteed. Past results do not predict future outcomes.

Two different tracks, often confused

Most of the headline dollar figures reported so far relate to the water-provider track — public utilities recovering the cost of removing PFAS from drinking water. Those settlements do not pay individuals.

The personal-injury track is separate. It covers firefighters, military and base personnel, airport workers, and residents who drank AFFF-affected water and were later diagnosed with a PFAS-linked condition. If you are a person rather than a water authority, this is the track your claim belongs to, and it is still being litigated.

Pennsylvania AFFF exposure sites

Former Naval Air Warfare Center Warminster, Bucks County
Former NAS Joint Reserve Base Willow Grove, Montgomery County
Horsham Air Guard Station, Montgomery County
Letterkenny Army Depot, Franklin County
Harrisburg International Airport, former Olmsted Air Force Base, Dauphin County
Municipal and volunteer fire-training grounds across the Commonwealth

More detail on those sites and the exposure pathways is on the AFFF firefighting foam page. To check whether your water was affected, see PFAS water testing in Pennsylvania, and for the diagnoses under review see PFAS-linked health conditions.

What a Pennsylvania claimant does now

1Write down where you served, worked, or lived near an AFFF source, with approximate years.
2Collect the diagnosis paperwork — pathology reports, oncology summaries, and treatment records.
3Gather anything tying you to the location: utility bills, deeds or leases, employment records, DD-214 or service records.
4Submit the intake form so the timing can be checked against the applicable limitation period.

Representation of accepted cases is typically on a contingency-fee basis — no attorneys’ fees unless a recovery is obtained. Clients may remain responsible for case costs and expenses; the written retainer will set out how costs are handled.

Who the defendants are

The defendants named across MDL 2873 include manufacturers of PFAS chemicals and of AFFF foam itself. Companies that appear frequently in the litigation include 3M, DuPont and its spin-offs Chemours and Corteva, Tyco Fire Products, Chemguard, Kidde-Fenwal, and other foam and fluorochemical suppliers. Which defendants are relevant to a specific claim depends on the foam products used at the site and the years of exposure.

How bellwether trials work

In a large MDL, the court and the parties pick a small group of representative “bellwether” cases to prepare for trial first. The results do not decide anyone else’s case, but they give both sides information about how juries respond to the evidence, which often shapes settlement discussions for the remaining claims. In MDL 2873 the first personal-injury pools focused on kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, and ulcerative colitis. Other diagnoses — such as liver cancer and certain other cancers listed on our PFAS health conditions pages — may still be reviewed, but the evidence and timing can differ.

Filing deadlines in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania generally allows two years to bring a personal-injury claim (42 Pa.C.S. § 5524). Pennsylvania courts also apply a “discovery rule” that can affect when that period starts in cases where a person could not reasonably have known about the injury or its cause. How these rules apply to a particular diagnosis is fact-specific, which is why the date of diagnosis and the date you first learned of a possible PFAS link both matter on the intake form. Do not assume a deadline has passed — or that it has not — without a review.

Military, firefighter, and resident claimants

Service members and veterans generally pursue claims against product manufacturers rather than the government. Service records (DD-214) and base assignments help document exposure.
Career and volunteer firefighters may have exposure from training and live-fire use of Class B foam, and in some cases from turnout gear. Department training logs and years of service are useful records.
Residents near bases and airports usually rely on drinking-water exposure. Water-authority notices and PFAS test results for your water are the key records. See the Bucks County, Montgomery County, and Franklin County pages for local context.

Key terms

AFFF: Aqueous film-forming foam, a Class B firefighting foam used on fuel fires that historically contained PFAS.
MDL: Multidistrict litigation: a federal procedure that gathers similar individual cases before one judge for pretrial proceedings.
General causation: Whether a substance is capable of causing a particular disease in people. Specific causation asks whether it caused the claimant’s disease.
Remand: Sending a case back to the federal district where it was originally filed, usually for trial.

Attorney advertising notice. This page is general information about publicly reported litigation, not legal advice, and the MDL docket changes frequently. Submitting an intake form does not create an attorney-client relationship, and cases may be referred to national PFAS co-counsel.

AFFF MDL 2873: Where the Litigation Stands